WENDELL  PHILLIPS 


WENDELL  PHILLIPS 

THE  FAITH  OF  AN 
AMERICAN 

BY 
GEORGE  EDWARD  WOODBERRY 


PRINTED  FOR  THE 

WOODBERRY  SOCIETY 

1912 


COPYRIGHT,  1912,  BY  GEORGE  E.  WOODBERRY 


THIS  ADDRESS  WAS  DELIVERED  ON  NOVEMBER  29,  191  I 
BEFORE  THE  WOODBERRY  SOCIETY  AND  ITS  FRIENDS 
AT  ITS  FIRST  MEETING,  IN  THE  HALL  OF  THE  GROLIER 
CLUB,  NEW  YORK,  TO  MARK  THE  ONE  HUNDREDTH 
ANNIVERSARY  OF  THE  BIRTH  OF  WENDELL  PHILLIPS 


253833 


WENDELL  PHILLIPS 

THE  FAITH  OF  AN   AMERICAN 

I  THANK  you,  Mr.  President;  and, 
my  friends,  no  words  can  express  the 
pleasure  I  take  in  this  welcome,  nor  my 
sense  of  the  honor  you  have  done  me.  I 
greet  the  Society  at  the  beginning  of  its 
career;  and  it  is  a  great  happiness  to  find 
myself  asked  to  link  with  the  occasion  the 
memory  of  a  man  who  was  to  me,  and  still 
is,  one  of  the  masters  of  my  life. 

I  want  to  tell  you  how  it  was  that  Wen 
dell  Phillips  came  to  be,  in  my  eyes,  the 
ideal  American.  Do  yourealize  what  it  was 
to  be  a  boy  in  the  days  of  the  Civil  War? 
Almost  my  first  clear  memory  is  of  the 
family  table  when  one  of  my  older  broth 
ers  burst  in  at  the  door,  crying  out/'  They 
have  fired  on  Sumter !  "So  deeply  was  that 
scene  imprinted  on  my  eyes  that  I  can 
still  see  how  every  one  looked.  A  few  days 
later  a  tall  tree  from  the  old  family  wood- 


2  WENDELL  PHILLIPS 

lot  lay  stripped  of  its  branches  in  the  yard, 
like  a  mast, — our  flag-pole;  and  from  it 
the  flag  floated  throughout  the  war.  The 
young  soldiers  were  camped  on  the  com 
mon  where  I  played, opposite  the  house; 
and  when  they  went  off  to  war,  my  father 
made  them  the  farewell  speech.  I  can  see, 
as  if  it  were  yesterday,  the  reading  of  the 
evening  newspaper  after  their  first  battle, 
for  one  son  of  the  house,  a  cousin,  was 
with  them ;  and  I  can  see  the  letter  which 
two  years  later  brought  the  message  of  his 
death.  I  picked  lint,  as  every  one  did,  for 
the  wounded  after  Gettysburg.  My  earli 
est  literary  treasure,  which  was  the  file  of 
my  Sunday-school  paper,  I  sent  off  to  the 
army  for  soldiers' reading.  I  suppose  it  was 
my  dearest  possession.  I  remember  the 
early  April  dawn  when  I  was  waked  by 
the  bells  ringing  for  Lee's  surrender,  and 
the  darker  morning  of  Lincoln's  death.  I 
recall  that  the  boy  who  told  me  the  news 
was  seated  on  the  arm  of  a  wheelbarrow ; 


WENDELL  PHILLIPS  3 

and  as  I  ran  home,  frightened  and  awed, 
I  saw  men  crying  in  the  street  and  heard 
women  weeping  in  the  houses,  and  while 
I  was  telling  my  tale,  the  bells  began  to 
toll. 

Four  years  of  this.  I  was  but  a  child, 
but  I  shared  the  emotion  of  a  nation.  I 
do  not  think  one  can  overestimate  the 
power  of  such  an  experience  to  permeate 
and,  as  it  were,  drench  the  soul.  I  believe 
it  gave  moral  depth  to  my  nature,  and 
lodged  the  principle  of  devotion  to  great 
causes  in  the  very  beatings  of  my  heart. 
I  was  born  at  once,  from  the  first  flash  of 
my  intelligence,  into  the  world  of  ideas; 
my  first  emotions  were  exercised  in  a  na 
tion's  pulses;  high  instinfts  put  forth  in 
my  breast.  I  was  but  one  of  thousands.  I 
do  not  wish  to  appear  singular,  or  to  ex 
aggerate.  This  is  merely  what  it  was  to  be 
a  boy  in  those  days.  But  child  though  I 
was,  I  feel  that  I  cannot  exaggerate  the 
passion  that  was  poured  along  my  veins 


4  WENDELL  PHILLIPS 

in  boyhood;  and,  as  the  commotion  of  the 
strife  slowly  subsided  in  the  stormy  mea 
sures  of  the  period  of  reconstruction,  my 
growing  youth  was  still  fed  on  great  and 
impersonal  issues  of  the  large  world.  I 
was  a  school-boy,  but  I  knew  more  about 
negro  rights  than  Latin  grammar,  Santo 
Domingo  better  than  the  Peloponne 
sus;  and  the  Franco-Prussian  War,  which 
broke  out  in  my  last  school-year,  was 
more  to  me  than  the  entire  outlines  of 
ancient  and  modern  history.  Public  inter 
ests  had  become  the  habit  of  my  mind ; 
and  contemporary  events  were  always 
more  interesting  to  me  than  my  studies. 
My  first  recollection  of  hearing  Wen 
dell  Phillips  is  from  my  college  days, 
though  of  course  he  was  always  one  of 
my  heroes,  and  I  may  have  heard  him  be 
fore,  for  we  were  an  anti-slavery  family. 
A  gentleman  of  uncommon  distinction 
in  look  and  bearing,  talking  in  an  un 
commonly  conversational  manner  without 


WENDELL  PHILLIPS  5 

raising  his  voice,  and  with  nothing  very 
much  to  say, — that  was  the  impression, 
almost  disconcerting  to  an  admirer;  one 
was  tempted  to  wish  he  would  wake  up 
and  show  his  mettle;  but  you  listened. 
Then  the  first  thing  you  noticed  was  that 
people  were  taking  up  their  hats;  he  was 
done.  There  was  no  sense  that  time  ha< 
passed.  He  bound  me  with  a  spell.  I  canno 
describe  his  oratory.  I  have  heard  many 
others  make  addresses ;  I  never  heard  any 
other  man  speak.  I  measure  the  intensity 
of  the  impression  he  made  upon  me  by  the 
fa£t  that,  while  I  have  very  little  of  what  i 
called  power  of  visualization  in  memory 
there  are  certain  sentences  of  his  which  ] 
as  I  have  been  lately  reading  his  speeches, 
bring  the  whole  man  before  me.  I  hear 
his  intonations,  I  see  his  attitude,  as  if  his 
voice  were  still  sounding  in  my  ears  and 
his  form  standing  before  my  eyes. "Des 
potism  looks  down  into  the  poor  man's 
cradle,  and  knows  it  can  crush  resistance 


6  WENDELL  PHILLIPS 

and  curb  ill-will.  Democracy  sees  the  bal 
lot  in  that  baby-hand;" — you  saw  him 
stand  above  the  cradle;  you  felt  that,  in 
comparison  with  that  u baby-hand,"  the 
sceptres  of  monarchs  were  as  dust  in  the 
balances  of  power."  If  these  things  are  so, 
the  boy  is  born  who  will  write  the  Decline 
and  Fall  of  the  American  Republic;" — 
I  thought  that  boy  was  sitting  by  me  in 
the  next  seat.  There  was  such  vividness  / 
in  his  eloquence.  And,  in  the  old  phrase,    J 
persuasion  sat  upon  his  lips.  You  believed  / 
what  he  said  while  he  spoke.  I  remember  I 
a  friend  of  mine  in  Lincoln,  Nebraska,  a   ] 
gold  Democrat,  who  was  his  host,  relat-  ( 
ing  to  me  in  illustration  of  this  the  effecl^ 
of  Phillips 's  private  talk:  "Why,  Wood-\ 
berry,"  he  said, "it  was  two  days  before 
I  got  back  to  my  right  senses  on  the  cur-( 
rency  question."  I  heard  him  seldom;  but 
hearing  him  thus  at  intervals  and  at  a  dis 
tance,  ripening  now  to  years  of  manhood, 
not  suddenly  nor  with  any  intention  of 


WENDELL  PHILLIPS  7 

my  own  the  spell  deepened  in  me ;  and  / 
unconsciously,  as  it  were,  the  patriotic/ 
passion  that  had  consecrated  my  boy  hood  V 
rose  up  and  swore  allegiance  to  this  mas 
ter  example  of  a  civic  life.  There  was  my 
sense  and  feeling  of  his  magnetic  power; 
there  was,  perhaps,  the  temperamental 
sympathy  that  has  since  made  me,  as  you 
know,  a  past-master  in  heresies ;  but,more 
than  this,  there  was  the  craving  of  the 
human  heart  for  a  living  personality  from 
which  to  draw  strength  in  its  faith.  Of 
all  the  leaders  of  that  time  he  alone  was 
to  me  a  living  person ;  only  from  him  did 
I  have  that  touch  which  is,  from  genera 
tion  to  generation,  the  laying  on  of  the 
hands  of  life. 

I  came  to  feel  him  yet  more  near.  I  met 
him  once  or  twice.  The  first  time  was  in 
my  brother's  store.  He  spent  two  sum 
mers  at  Beverly,  during  which  I  was  for 
the  most  part  away.  He  used  to  come  up 
for  his  mail,  and  would  step  into  the  store 


8  WENDELL  PHILLIPS 

to  read  his  letters  and  talk  for  an  hour  or 
so  every  morning ;  and  so  he  became  for 
us,  in  away,  a  household  memory ;  and  he 
left  two  mementoes  of  himself,  illustrating 
two  sides  of  his  nature, — one,  a  portrait 
of  John  Brown ;  the  other,  a  Greek  terra- 
co ttamask  of  a  woman'sface,  from  Charles 
Sumner's  collection,  as  beautiful  an  ex 
ample  as  I  ever  saw.  Sometimes  a  child — 
he  spoke  to  all  the  children  on  the  street 
— would  come  in  for  his  autograph;  and 
he  wrote,  as  was  his  well-known  custom, 
the  words,"  Peace,  if  possible ;  but  justice 
at  any  rate/' These  are  memories  of  his 
age.  There  was  another  Phillips,  of  whom 
!  I  will  speak  later.  This  was  the  Phillips 
(  that  I  knew, — an  old  gray  man,  simple, 
kindly,  serene;  a  gentleman  in  every  line 
of  his  fine  features,  in  every  motion,  in 
every  fibre ;  a  type  never  to  be  forgotten 
by  eyes  that  saw  him.  At  a  little  distance, 
especially  when  he  wore  his  great  over 
coat,  he  might  have  been  taken  for  some 


WENDELL  PlftLLIPS  9 

old  farmer.  It  was  thus  he  looked  at 
Arnold's  le<5ture  when  he  spoke  some 
after- words  of  truth  about  Emerson.  In 
the  streets  of  Boston,  toward  the  end,  he 
seemed  a  somewhat  lonely  figure,  I  used 
to  think.  I  remember  Nora  Perry,  the 
poetess,  who  knew  him  well,  telling  me 
of  his  meeting  her  once  there  and  asking 
where  she  was  going/*  To  see  a  friend/' 
she  replied.  "Ah,"  he  said,  "you  remind 
«  me  of  the  Frenchman  who  received  the 
same  answer,  and  said, '  Take  me  along.  I 
never  saw  one/ "Phillips  had  friends,  and 
I  have  known  some  of  them  who  have 
enriched  my  impression  of  him  as  a  per-  , 
sonality ;  but  in  early  life  he  had  few,  and  * 
a  man,  though  he  have  many  friends,  may 
sometimes  feel  like  that. 

Of  course  I  do  not  mean  to  pronounce 
any  eulogy  on  Wendell  Phillips,  or  to  re 
view  that  career, — one  of  the  most  dra 
matic  in  the  annals  of  American  biogra 
phy, — though  it  tempts  my  pen.  Others, 


10  WENDELL  PHILLIPS 

whose  lips  are  more  skilled  than  mine 
in  public  encomium,  will  do  that  to-night 
before  great  audiences  ;  the  present  lead 
ers  of  those  causes  which  he  championed 
at  their  birth  will  bring  him  praise;  the 
race  to  whom  he  devoted  his  prime,  chief 
mourner  at  his  grave,  will  deck  the  sod 
with  flowers  and  cover  his  memory  with 
gratitude.  We  are  but  a  little  band  of 
friends  gathered  together  to  consider  the 
lesson  of  his  life.  I  desire,  as  the  leader 
of  our  thoughts,  to  regard  him  independ 
ently  of  the  transitory  events  and  mea 
sures  of  his  career,  and  rather  to  set  forth 
what  was  fundamental  in  that  spirit,  of 
which  his  a6ls  and  words  were  merely 
the  mortal  phenomena. 

That  spirit,  most  striftly  stated,  was 

/  the  soul  of  New  England.  He  was  a  New 

^Englander,  a  Bostonian,  and  yet  more 

\narrowly,  a  Boston  Puritan.  I  refer  not 

so  much  to  his  birth,  as  to  his  substance. 

The  pivotal  points  of  human  history  seem 


0 


WENDELL  PHILLIPS  1  1 

often  ridiculously  small.  You  remember 
Lowell's   fine  sentence:  "On  a  map  of 
the  world   you   may   cover  Judea  with 
your  thumb,  Athens  with  a  finger-tip; 
but  they  still  lord  it  in  the  thought  and/* 
action  of  every  civilized  man/'  The  Puri 
tan  spirit  is  a  similar  phenomenon.  It  pre 
sents  the  same  union  of  intense  localiza-, 
tion  with  a  world-wide  sweep  of  principle/ 
Wendell  Phillips  was  that  burning  nu 
cleus  made  a  living  soul,  whose  vibrations 
were  sent  through  a  people.  Moral  depth 
was  the  distinguishing  trait  of  his  nature; 
remorseless  logic  was  the  biting  edge  of 
his  mind.  He  sent  his  roots  so  far  down 
that  they  seemed  to  clasp  the  very  rock  of 
righteousness,  and  thereby  he  towered/ 
the  more  in  the  intellectual  air  of  truth/ 
You  may  know  a  Boston  man  by  two  traits  J  \ 
— not  that  he  has  any  exclusive  owner-  i  j 
ship  of  them:  he  thinks  he  knows,  and 
he  thinks  he  is  right.  In  a  world  prone  to 
error  men  smile  at  such  claims ;  but  what 


12  WENDELL  PHILLIPS 

if  by  chance  they  should  be  well  founded  ? 
Wendell  Phillips  did  know.  Wendell  Phil 
lips  was  right.  How  did  he  achieve  such 
an  uncommon  distinction  in  a  public  man  ? 
Phillips  believed  in  ideas.  They  were 
his  stock  in  trade,  his  armory,  his  jewels, 


>  — what  you  will.  To  know  them,  to  pre- 
\  sent  them,  to  discuss  them,  to  make  them 
'prevail, — that  was  his  life-work.  Other 
men  profess  to  believe  in  ideas,  but  usu 
ally  with  some  qualification  of  expedi 
ency,  of  opportunity,  of  compromise,  and 
with  a  frequent  disposition  to  rely  on  other 
agencies, —  favor, money, force;  but  Phil 
lips  believed  in  ideas,  rulers  by  their  own 
nature,  viftors  in  their  own  right,  whose 
advance  was  as  resistless  as  the  motion 
of  matter,  inviolable  as  natural  law, — the 
reign  of  what  ought  to  be.  Children  of 
man's  intelligence  and  man's  conscience, 
ideas  are  born  to  the  inheritance  of  the 
earth.  This  belief  in  the  power  of  the  un 
aided  idea  to  win  was  a  cardinal  point  in 


WENDELL  PHILLIPS  13 

his  convi6lions.  It  was  a  corollary  of  his 
faith  in  the  soundness  of  human  nature : 
men  can  know  truth;  men  can  be  per 
suaded  of  it;  and  men — humanity — will 
not  reject  truth  if  once  it  be  clear  in  their 
minds  and  hearts. 

The  great  enemy  of  ideas  is  institu 
tions.  Phillips  drew  in  with  his  New  Eng 
land  milk  the  temper  of  that  stock  which 
had  dethroned  a  king.  He  breathed  the 
same  transcendental  air  as  Emerson.  His 
view  of  history  was  praftically  that  of 
the  Revolutionary  fathers,  and, in  its  theo 
retical  part,  that  of  his  great  contempora 
ries.  He  had  apprehended  and  thoroughly 
mastered  the  conception  of  history  as  the 
unfolding  of  the  soul  of  humanity.  Institu 
tions  are  the  successive  cells  of  its  habit- 
ancy,like  the  chambered  nautilus. 

"  Build  thee  more  stately  mansions,  O  my  Soul!  " 

The  growth  of  the  soul  is  a  continual 
emergence, — a  breaking  of  swaddling- 


14  WENDELL  PHILLIPS 

bands,  a  casting  away  of  outgrown  and 
wornout  clothes,  a  transgression  of  sa 
cred  limits,  a  rending  of  the  veil  of  the 
temple,  an  earthquake-fall  of  the  pillars 
of  the  state,  a  resurre6tion  into  higher 
forms,  a  revolution  into  ampler  good,  an 
ascent  where  the  free  spirit's  foot  rests  ris 
ing  from  the  body  of  the  dead  past.  Institu 
tions  are  shells ;  as  soon  as  they  begin  to  be 
uncomfortable,  as  soon  as  the  living  body 
begins  to  feel  their  pressure,  to  be  cabined 
and  confined  therein,  the  walls  break ;  the 
young  oak  explodes  the  old  acorn.  Phil 
lips  was  fond  of  repeating  Goethe's  simile 
of  the  plant  in  the  porcelain  vase:  "  If  the 
pot  cannot  hold  the  plant/'  he  would  say, 
"  let  it  crack !  "Civilization  laughs  at  insti 
tutions.  Order,  in  the  sense  of  the  fixity 
and  permanence  of  what  is,  which  society 
enjoins  and  old  men  love,  is  a  defective 
conception  of  public  well-being.  It  maybe 
heaven's  first  law, but  heaven  is  a  finished 
place.  Change  is  the  password  of  grow- 


WENDELL  PHILLIPS  15 

ing  states.  Order  means  acquiescence, 
content,  a  halt;  persisted  in,  it  means  the 
atrophy  of  life,  a  living  death;  it  is  the 
abdication  of  progress.  We  were  taught 
that  the  divine  discontent  in  our  youthful 
breasts  was  the  swelling  of  the  buds  of 
the  soul ;  so  there  is  a  divine  discontent  in 
the  state,  which  is  the  motions  of  its  di 
vinity  within  brooding  on  times  to  come. 
Agitation  is  that  part  of  our  intellectual 
life  where  vitality  resides.  There  ideas  are 
born,  breed,  and  bring  forth.  Without  in 
cessant  agitation  of  ideas,  public  free  dis 
cussion,  the  state  is  dead.  Disorder,  in 
deed,  is  a  disturbance  of  our  peace,  an  in 
terference  with  our  business, a  trouble ;  but 
that  is  its  purpose — to  trouble.  Phillips, 
quoting  Lord  Holland, — for  he  liked  to 
mask  his  wisdom  in  a  distinguished  name, 
— often  said:"  We  are  well  aware  that  the 
privileges  of  the  people,  the  rights  of  free 
discussion,  and  the  spirit  and  letter  of  our 
popular  institutions  must  render — and 


16  WENDELL  PHILLIPS 

they  are  intended  to  render  —  the  contin 
uance  of  an  extensive  grievance,  and  of 
the  dissatisfaction  consequent  thereupon, 
dangerous  to  the  tranquillity  of  the  coun 
try,  and  ultimately  subversive  of  the  au 
thority  of  the  state/'  That  is  the  principle 
which,  applied  generally,  is  the  univer 
sal  charter  of  ideas,  under  whose  freedom 
they  maintain  that  incessant  crumbling  of 
institutions  which  is  the  work  of  growing 
nations. 

If,  in  Phillips's  scheme,  ideas  are  the 
agents  and  agitation  the  means,  the  end 
is  justice.  No  word  was  so  dear  to  him  as 
/  justice.  Every  chord  of  his  voice  knew 
its  music.  It  was  a  God  of  justice  that  old 
New  England  worshipped;  and  throne 
what  creed  you  will  in  her  later  churches, 
Ithe  awful  imprint  of  that  ancient  faith  will 
never  fade  from  the  hearts  of  her  old  race. 
The  sense  of  justice  is  the  bed-rock  of  the 
Puritan  soul.  It  was  this  that  gave  passion 
ate  conviction  and  iron  edge  to  the  little 


'  < 


WENDELL  PHILLIPS  17 

band  of  anti-slavery  apostles  with  whom 
Phillips  walked,  pleaded,  and  preached 
through  long  years  of  hatred,  contumely, 
and  scorn.  In  the  evening  of  his  days  that 
molten  glow  seemed  todissol ve  in  a  golden 
vision  of  a  world  where  every  man  should 
have  an  equitable  share  in  the  goods  of 
nature  and  the  benefits  of  civilization,  and 
he  saw  mankind  converging  thereto  in 
many  lands  by  many  paths. 

I  cannot  fully  state  nor  adequately  re 
view  the  particular  ideas  of  Phillips  in 
their  number;  but  I  will  touch  on  one  or  ,  , 
two  of  the  most  elementary.  He  believed 
in  the  principle  of  human  equality.  He  was 
intellectually  the  child  of  that  much  de 
rided  but  still  extant  document,  the  De 
claration  of  Independence.  Ideas  are  only 
truly  alive  when  they  are  incarnated  in 
some  man.  The  Rights  of  Man  were  as 
the  bone  and  muscle  of  Phillips,  and  the 
flood  of  human  hope  that  once  streamed 
from  the  Declaration,  as  a  lighthouse 


18  WENDELL  PHILLIPS 

among  the  nations,  made  music  in  his 
blood  and  thrilled  his  nerves.  He  was, 
doubtless,  sustained  in  his  belief  in  human 
equality  by  his  Christian  convi6lions  of 
the  divine  origin  and  immortal  nature  of 
man,  and  by  his  unshaken  faith  in  that 
God  who  had  made  of  one  blood  all  the 
nations  of  the  earth,  and  was  a  just  God. 
In  Christianity  the  line  is  so  sharply  drawn 
between  all  other  creatures  and  man, "a 
little  lower  than  the  angels/' that  such  a 
conception  of  the  unity  of  human  nature 
is  almost  axiomatic. 

I  shall  not  discuss  the  truth  of  the 
doftrine ;  but  it  lay  at  the  roots  of  Phil- 
"\.  lips's  faith  in  the  people,  which  was  his 
distinguishing  trait  as  a  master  of  public 
affairs.  No  hyperbole  can  overstate  that 
faith.  Phillips  believed  in  ideas,  but  not 
in  an  intellectual  class  who  are  the  pos 
sessors  and  guardians  of  ideas,  and  by 
that  fa6l  trustees  of  the  masses.  He  be 
lieved  in  ideas,  not  in  the  form  of  know- 


WENDELL  PHILLIPS  19 

ledge,  but  in  the  form  of  wisdom.  Know 
ledge  may  belong  to  the  brain  of  the 
scholar,  but  wisdom  is  the  breath  of  the 
people.  Knowledge  is  the  idea,  volatile  and 
abstract,  in  the  mind;  but  wisdom  is  the 
idea  dipped  in  the  dyer's  vat  of  life.  The 
masses  have  political  wisdom  because  the 
life  of  the  people  is  the  life  of  the  state. 
An  Italian  boy,  working  out  taxes  on  a 
Sicilian  road,  said  to  me  once:  "The  poor 
pay  with  their  bodies,  Signore/'I  remem 
bered  it  because  the  words  were  almost 
identical  with  Lowell's."  I  am  impatient/' 
he  said  at  Birmingham, "of  being  told 
that  property  is  entitled  to  exceptional 
consideration  because  it  bears  all  the  bur 
dens  of  the  state.  It  bears  those,  indeed, 
which  can  most  easily  be  borne,  but  pov 
erty  pays  with  its  person  the  chief  ex 
penses  of  war,  pestilence,  and  famine/' 
That  boy  is  probably  nowin  Tripoli,"  pay 
ing  with  his  person; "that  is  what  I  mean 
by  the  political  idea  dipped  in  the  dyer's 


20  WENDELL  PHILLIPS 

vat  of  life.  "Theories/' said  Phillips, "are 
pleasing  things,  and  seem  to  get  rid  of  all 
difficulties  so  very  easily.  One  must  begin 
to  abstract  principles  and  study  them.  But 
wisdom  consists  in  perceiving  when  hu 
man  nature  and  this  perverse  world  ne 
cessitate  making  exceptions  to  abstract 
truths.  Any  boy  can  see  an  abstract  prin 
ciple.  Only  threescore  years  and  ten  can 
discern  precisely  when  and  where  it  is 
well,  necessary,  and  right  to  make  an  ex 
ception  to  it.  That  faculty  is  wisdom,  all 
the  rest  is  playing  with  counters.  And  this 
explains  how  the  influx  into  politics  of 
a  shoal  of  college-boys,  slenderly  fur 
nished  with  Greek  and  Latin/' — they  are 
still  more  slenderly  furnished  now, — 
"  but  steeped  in  marvellous  and  delightful 
ignorance  of  life  and  public  affairs,  is  fill 
ing  the  country  with  free-trade  din." 

The  depositary  of  this  life-wisdom,  in 
state  affairs,  is  the  masses.  Municipal  gov 
ernment  in  America  was,  in  Phillips's 


WENDELL  PHILLIPS  21 

judgment,  a  failure ;  but  I  cannot  think  he 
would  have  welcomed  government  by 
commission  as  a  remedy,  or  have  ever  as 
sented  to  that  increasing  tendency  toward 
government  by  experts,  which  is  observ 
able  among  us.  There  is  government  busi 
ness  which  should  be  conduced  by  com 
petent  officials ;  but  government  is  not  a 
business.  It  is  amazing  how  government 
tends  to  localize  itself  in  a  class,  which, 
temporarily  dominant  in  the  community 
under  special  circumstances,  mistakes  its 
interest  and  j  udgment  for  that  of  the  whole 
body,  and  desires  to  be  recognized  as  the 
trustee  of  the  others ;  government  by  sol 
diers,  by  lawyers,  a  business-man's  gov 
ernment,  a  banker's  government, — what 
not?  All  are  but  instances  of  a  part  trying 
to  swallow  the  whole.  It  is  natural  to  mis 
take  one's  own  point  of  view  for  the  cen 
tre,  hard  to  believe  in  the  possibility  of  the 
antipodes  where  men  walk,  quite  natu 
rally,  with  their  heads  upside  down.  I  re- 


22  WENDELL  PHILLIPS 

member  an  English  officer  at  Taormina,  a 
man  of  cultivation,  explaining  to  me  with 
great  cogency  and  sincerity  the  advan 
tage  of  settling  human  disputes  by  war  in 
stead  of  by  courts;  it  was  the  better  way. 
It  is  a  good  point  in  a  king,  considered  as 
the  head  of  a  government,  that  he  is  nei 
ther  a  lawyer,  nor  a  business-man,  nor  a 
banker,  nor  even  an  independent  voter.  I 
have  no  quarrel  with  independent  voting ; 
but  when  a  party  of  independent  voters 
assumes  to  be  the  brain  and  conscience  of 
the  state,  and  thinks  to  control  it  by  pos 
sessing  itself  of  the  balance  of  power,  like 
a  clique  in  a  Continental  parliament, — and 
especially  if  it  does  this  in  the  name  of 
education  or  of  any  superiority  residing  in 
it,  as  if  it  were  that  remnant  in  whom  was 
the  safety  of  Israel, — it  is  an  insolentchal- 
lenge  to  popular  government  and  breathes 
the  spirit  of  the  most  bigoted  autocracy. 
No.  Least  of  all  does  it  belong  to  the 
scholar  to  distrust  the  people;  least  of  all 


WENDELL  PHILLIPS  23 

to  him  whose  stake  in  the  country  is  not 
property,  nor  any  personal  holdings  nor 
gain,  but  rather  his  share  of  human  hope 
for  the  betterment  of  man's  lot  among  all 
nations  and  in  distant  ages;  least  of  all 
to  him,  the  dreamer,  to  forget  where  and 
when  and  by  whom  the  blows  of  the  in 
cessant  Revolution,  which  is  the  rise  of 
humanity,  have  been  struck. 

"All  revolutions/'  said  Phillips, "come 
from  below/'  Had  he  not  seen  it?  Had  he 
not  been  thrust  out  of  the  world's  society, 
and  found  all  that  was  organized  and  re 
spectable  in  the  state  against  him? — the 
more  bitter  the  more  high  it  stood  ?  He  had 
with  his  own  lips  successively  consigned 
to  damnation  the  Church, the  Constitution, 
and  the  Union  because  they  were  doing 
devil's  work.  "  When  I  was  absorbed  into 
this  great  movement,"  he  said/'  I  remem 
ber  well  that  it  found  me  a  very  proud  man ; 
proud  of  the  religious,  proud  of  the  civil, 
institutions  of  the  country.  Thirty  years 


24  WENDELL  PHILLIPS 

have  not  brought  back  the  young  pride 
nor  renewed  the  young  trust.  I  go  out  with 
no  faith  whatever  in  institutions/' And  the 
lesson  he  had  learned  in  his  own  person, 
history  repeated  to  him  from  her  page. 
Always  against  the  mighty,  the  proud, the 
comfortable,  the  human  mass  had  surged 
up  under  the  pressure  of  its  wants  and 
instindrts  in  the  growth  of  time.  Power, 
in  the  end,  was  theirs:  against  noble  or 
priest,  against  learning  or  wealth,  power 
at  last  rested  with  them. "  Keep  it,"  said 
Phillips;  "you  can  never  part  with  too 
little,  you  can  never  retain  too  much/' 
Jealousy  of  power,"  eternal  vigilance,"  is 
the  first  safeguard  of  a  free  state.  The 
people  parts  with  power  only  to  find  an 
oppressor  in  its  holder.  Tyranny  is  the 
first  instinft  of  power.  It  is  an  old  maxim 
of  state  that  power  corrupts  the  hand  that 
wields  it. "No  man  is  good  enough,"  said 
Lincoln, "to  rule  any  other  man. "Jeal 
ousy  of  power  is  of  the  essence  of  the 


WENDELL  PHILLIPS  25 

American  spirit,  and  drawn  from  its  his 
toric  birth;  it  may  slumber  long,  but  it 
slumbers  light;  and  to-day  the  land  is  full 
of  its  mutterings. 

How  has  it  fared  with  the  causes  Phil 
lips  committed  to  the  angry  sea  of  public 
discussion  and  the  stormy  decision  of  the 
popular  tribunal  ?  He  fought  in  them  all ; 
he  responded  to  every  appeal,  at  home, 
abroad.  After  the  viftory  over  the  arch- 
foe,  slavery,  others  might  sigh,  like  the 
good  Edmund  Quincy,  with  a  feeling  of 
glad  relief, "  No  more  picnics,  Wendell ;" 
but  his  hand  in  that  grim  conflict  had  so 
closed  round  the  sword-hilt  of  speech  that 
it  could  not  loose  its  grip.  He  fought  on, 
and  his  post  was  always  ahead.  There 
are  those  who  thought  him  foolish,  head 
strong,  erratic,  fanatic,  wrong;  but  when 
was  he  ever  thought  otherwise  by  his  op 
ponents,  or  by  the  indifferent, — men  still 
unenlightened  by  the  event?  I  make  no 
apologies  for  him.  Examine  the  record. 


26  WENDELL  PHILLIPS 

You  can  follow  the  trail  of  triumphant 
popular  causes  by  the  echoes  of  that  sil 
ver  voice.  Woman  suffrage,  labor,  tem 
perance, — these  have  made  giant  strides 
since  he  was  laid  to  rest.  Ireland  has  home 
rule  at  her  door.  Russia  has  the  Duma. 
Capital  punishment,  indeed,  still  survives, 
but  there  has  been  great  advance  in  the 
general  attitude  toward,  and  treatment 
of,  the  criminal  and  delinquent  classes, 
though  there  has  been  occasionally  a  bar 
baric  return  to  the  whipping-post,  and  to 
day  we  hear  again  on  all  sides  the  blood 
hound  cry  for  the  speedy  trial  and  quick 
death  of  the  murderer.  The  initiative,  the 
referendum,  and  the  recall,  there  can  be 
no  doubt,  would  have  had  Phillips's  hearty 
cooperation  and  support.  They  are  but  the 
precipitation  of  his  thought.  The  recall 
of  the  judges  would  not  have  dismayed 
him.  He  had  recalled  a  judge.  The  recall 
of  judges  is  Massachusetts  doftrine  as 
old  as  the  state.  It  is  effected  by  the  will 


WENDELL  PHILLIPS  27 

of  the  governor,  acting  on  a  simple  ad 
dress  of  the  legislature  by  a  majority  vote 
without  other  ground  than  the  people's  de 
sire.  Edward  G.  Loring  was  thus  recalled, 
on  the  initiative  of  Phillips  and  others,  for 
the  reason  that,  although  a6ling  in  a  legal 
and  official  manner  as  federal  commis 
sioner  under  the  Fugitive  Slave  Act,  a 
"slave-hunter" — as  they  called  him — 
was  unfit  to  be  a  Massachusetts  judge. 
Phillips  foretold,  as  did  also  Lowell  in 
the  Birmingham  speech,  the  present  con- 
fli6l  with  incorporated  wealth.  "The  great 
question  of  the  future/'  he  said,"  is  money 
against  legislation.  My  friends,  you  and  I 
shall  be  in  our  graves  long  before  that  bat 
tle  is  ended ;  and  unless  our  children  have 
more  patience  and  courage  than  saved  this 
country  from  slavery,  republican  institu 
tions  will  go  down  before  moneyed  corpo 
ration  s.  The  corporations  of  America  mean 
to  govern;  and  unless  some  power  more 
radical  than  ordinary  politics  is  found,  will 


28  WENDELL  PHILLIPS 

govern  inevitably.  The  only  hope  of  any 
effectual  grapple  with  the  danger  lies  in 
rousing  the  masses  whose  interests  lie 
permanently  in  the  opposite  direction." 
Take  up  the  record  where  you  will,  if  you 
deny  merit  to  Phillips  in  his  latter-day 
instinfts  and  pleadings,  you  must  deny 
wisdom  to  the  aftual  movement  of  the 
last  thirty  years  and  the  plain  current  of 
American  democratic  development  at  the 
present  day. 

If  there  has  been  recession  anywhere, 
it  is  in  the  matter  which  lay  nearest  to  Phil 
lips 's  heart, — negro  rights,  race  equality, 
and  in  general  in  the  attitude  of  the  public 
mind  toward  the  principle  of  an  integral 
humanity,  one  and  the  same  in  all  men, 
which  is  found  in  the  Declaration.  The 
change  of  view,  which  I  think  no  one  can 
doubt,  is  not  peculiar  to  us,  but  is  world 
wide,  and  is  consequent  on  the  spread 
of  European  dominion  over  the  so-called 
backward  peoples  of  Asia  and  Africa.  The 


WENDELL  PHILLIPS  29 

sins  of  a  nation  lie  close  to  its  virtues.  The 
strength  of  our  age  is  commerce,  resting 
on  industry.  It  is  a  thing  of  vast  benefi 
cence,  and  loads  with  blessings  those  na 
tions  whom  it  benefits  ;but  like  all  strength 
it  has  its  temptations.  Our  temptation  is  to 
exploit  the  backward  nations,  and  possess 
ourselves  of  their  lands.  If  they  escape  the 
destruction  that  overtook  the  Indian,  it  is 
because  there  are  too  many  of  them.  The 
conqueror,  in  old  times,  when  there  was 
a  surplus  of  subjeft  populations,  enslaved 
them.  We  take  them  into  our  tutelage. 
The  idea  of  tutelage  readily  passes  into  a 
conception  of  our  wards  as  permanently 
inferior, but  economically  useful.  It  breeds 
the  notion  of  servile  races.  The  question 
of  human  equality  has  broadened.  It  is  no 
longer  a  question  of  a  black  skin,  but  of 
any  skin  except  white ;  so  true  is  it  that 
a  prejudice  against  one  race  is  a  prejudice 
against  all  races,  and  will  finally  prove  so. 
I  am  not  going  to  dispose  of  the  negro 


SO  WENDELL  PHILLIPS 

question  to-night;  but  I  mean  to  state  a 
few  matters  of  what  seems  to  me  elemen 
tary  truth. 

I  say  nothing  of  the  denial  of  negro 
rights  by  lynching.  That  is  a  mere  bru 
tality.  We  are  shamed  in  the  face  of  civ 
ilized  nations  as  no  other  of  the  group, 
except  Russia,  has  been  shamed  for  cen 
turies;  but  though  the  impeachment  of 
our  humanity  is  patent,  tragic,  and  terri 
ble,  I  do  not  believe  that  the  brutalities 
of  recent  years  are  a  drop  in  the  bucket 
in  comparison  with  what  the  negro  race 
suffered  under  slavery  in  old  days.  They 
are  sporadic ;  they  are  blazed  upon  by  the 
pitiless  publicity  of  all  the  world ;  they  are 
outlawed,  and  resemble  a6ls  of  brigand 
age.  I  note  only  the  extension  of  lynch 
ing  to  white  men  and  the  spread  of  the 
habit  of  burning  negroes  to  Northern 
States.  You  cannot  calmly  watch  a  fire  in 
your  neighbor's  house ;  it  will  leap  to  your 
own  roof.  You  cannot  wink  at  crime  in 


WENDELL  PHILLIPS  31 

your  neighbor's  dooryard ;  it  will  soon  be 
in  your  own.  The  denial  of  negro  rights 
by  the  nullification  of  the  constitutional 
amendments  is  a  graver  matter.  I  have 
only  this  to  say,  that  no  student  of  history 
can  be  surprised  at  a  diminishing  respe6l 
for  a  Constitution  that  does  not  maintain 
itself  as  the  supreme  law  of  the  land  hon 
estly  abided  by.  Phillips  stated  the  true 
principle:  "The  proper  time  to  maintain 
one's  rights  is  when  they  are  denied;  the 
proper  persons  to  maintain  them  are  those 
to  whom  they  are  denied. "I  devoutly  hope 
that  the  negroes  will  so  grow  in  manhood 
as  to  be  their  own  saviours  in  the  ful 
ness  of  time,  as  our  own  fathers  long  ago 
wrenched  from  the  hands  of  unwilling 
masters  the  rights  that  are  now  our  dear- 
est  possession. 

I  should  have  much  to  say  of  negro 
education,  were  there  time.  The  princi 
ple  is  plain.  Demand  the  same  schools 
for  negroes  as  for  white  men.  There  is  a 


32  WENDELL  PHILLIPS 

tendency  to  restrict  negro  education  to 
industrial  pursuits.  It  is  the  same  spirit 
which  advocates  vocational  schools  for 
the  children  of  the  laboring  classes.  It  is 
no  longer  a  question  of  the  black  serf,  but 
of  the  economic  animal  of  any  color.  I  be 
lieve  in  manual  training  for  all  children; 
I  believe  in  vocational  schools ;  but  these 
latter  are,  as  it  were,  the  professional 
schools  of  the  workers,  and  should  bear 
the  same  relation  to  a  moral  and  mental 
training, preparatory  to  or  associated  with 
them,  that  professional  schools  bear  to  the 
college.  The  first  thing  to  teach  a  child  is 
that  he  has  a  soul ;  the  first  thing  to  give 
a  boy  is  an  outlook  on  a  moral,  intellect 
ual,  and  aesthetic  world.  Not  to  endow  him 
with  that  is  to  leave  him  without  horizons, 
a  human  creature  blind  and  deaf,  centred 
in  the  work  of  his  hands  and  in  physical 
conditions, — an  economic  animal.  In  the 
educational  tendencies  to  which  I  refer, 
there  is  too  much  of  man  as  an  economic 


WENDELL  PHILLIPS  33 

animal.  The  negro  is  no  more  so  than  the 
white  man.  Give  the  negroes,  then,  the  / 
same  schools  as  the  whites ;  give  the  sons 
of  the  laboring  classes  the  same  schools 
as  all  other  children  of  the  state, — citizen 
schools. 

Man  is  an  economic  animal,  but  he  is 
not  primarily  that;  and  he  should  not  be 
educated  primarily  with  a  view  to  that, 
but  to  his  being  a  man.  The  workers 
should  always  be  jealously  on  their  guard 
against  any  principle  of  caste.  The  inter 
ests  of  the  negroes  will  finally  be  found 
to  be  permanently  identical  with  those  of 
the  working  class  everywhere,  and  labor 
should  never  acquiesce  in  any  social  view 
or  arrangement  which  contemplates  the 
laboring  mass  of  men  with  hands  lifted 
and  shoulders  bowed  to  receive  the  bur 
den  from  a  higher  class  more  fortunately 
endowed  to  be  their  masters.  You  can  ac-  i 
knowledge  your  inferiority  to  others  in 
acquirements, capacity, efficiency ;  but  you 


34  WENDELL  PHILLIPS 

cannot  acknowledge  inferiority  in  your 
being.  You  may  lay  the  humblest  tasks 
upon  yourself,  as  saints  and  sages  besides 
Milton  have  done;  but  you  yourself  must 
lay  them  on.  If  our  economic  system  neces 
sarily  embodies  a  principle  of  caste,  why, 
then,  as  Phillips  said, " let  it  crack! "Let 
it  go  the  way  of  many  another  institution 
that  once  seemed  all  powerful  and  of  the 
very  substance  of  necessity,  to  the  heap 
of  old  shards ! 

"  For  what  avail 
The  plow  and  sail" 

unless  the  man  be  free  ?I  deplore  the  tem 
per  which  acquiesces  in  the  conception  of 
permanent  servile  classes  in  the  state,  ed 
ucated  to  be  such,  and  the  spirit  of  def 
erence  thereto,  on  whatsoever  ground  it 
may  be  based.  It  is  not  by  deference  that 
men  win  their  rights.  It  is  not  by  denying 
their  own  share  in  the  spiritual  nature  of 
man  and  their  participation  in  the  high 
heritage  of  civilization  that  men  mount  in 


WENDELL  PHILLIPS  35 

that  realm  and  possess  themselves  of  that 
good. 

There  is  one  other  point.  A  race  is 
judged,  with  regard  to  its  capacity,  like  a 
poet,  not  by  its  normal  and  average  pro- 
duft,  but  by  its  best.  That  is  the  rule.  I 
suppose  that  the  most  immortal  oration  of 
Wendell  Phillips,  as  a  formal  production, 
is  that  onToussaint  L'Ouverture.  I  can  re 
member  the  hour  and  the  place  when  in 
my  boyhood  I  discovered  Shakspere,  By 
ron,  Shelley,  Carlyle,  Scott, Tasso,  Virgil, 
Homer ;  but  there  are  some  names  I  seem 
always  to  have  known.  The  Bible,  Wash 
ington,  Whittier,  Milton,  William  Tell, 
Algernon  Sidney,  Garibaldi,  Toussaint 
L'Ouverture,  mix  their  figures  with  the 
shadows  of  my  very  dawn  of  life.  I  sup 
pose  I  owe  Toussaint  L'Ouverture  to  Phil 
lips.  The  speech  is  a  marvellous  example 
of  oratorical  art,  and  will  be  treasured 
through  generations  by  negroes  as  the 
first  eulogy  of  a  man  of  their  race.  No 


\ 


36  WENDELL  PHILLIPS 

one  who  has  read  it  can  ever  forget  its 
peroration,  when  the  orator,  sinking  to 
his  close,  like  the  sun  setting  in  the  sea, 
seemed  to  fill  the  earth  with  light,  and 
touched  with  his  glory  the  mountain-peaks 
of  history, — summits  of  human  achieve 
ment,  Phocion,  Brutus,  Hampden,  La 
Fay ette,  Washington,  John  Brown, — and 
high  over  all  poured  his  light  onToussaint 
L'Ouverture;  high  over  all,  not  in  arms, 
letters,  or  arts,  but  in  moral  greatness, 
which  all  men  agree  is  the  supreme  ex 
cellence  of  man. 

There  is  one  thing  that  latitude  and 
longitude  do  not  bound,  nor  geography, 
nor  climate,  nor  ancestry,  nor  poverty, 
nor  ignorance,  nor  previous  condition  of 
barbarism, — one  capacity,  at  least,  com 
mon  to  mankind,  moral  power.  Who  of  \ 
us  has  not,  at  some  time  or  other,  stood 
amazed  and  reverent  before  some  simple 
human  aft,  among  the  humble,  in  which 
the  soul  shone  forth,  as  if  disapparelled 


WENDELL  PHILLIPS  37 

of  its  poor  belongings,  in  its  own  nature? 
I  believe  that  the  race  which  is  thus  capa 
ble  of  moral  power  can  scale  all  other 
heights.  It  may  be  that  the  negroes,  con 
sidered  with  a  view  to  their  social  utility, 
like  all  other  masses  of  men,  are  capable 
only  of  an  economic  service.  That  is  the 
main  task  of  mankind.  But  beware  of  clos 
ing  the  gates  of  mercy  on  those  young 
ambitions,  those  forward  instin6ls,  the 
prayers  and  struggles  of  the  waking  soul 
of  a  race !  Give  the  negroes  a  true  univer 
sity, — a  white  man's  university.  The  trials 
and  discouragements  of  genius  are  an  old 
and  sad  story  in  our  own  annals.  Think 
what  the  burden  must  be  that  rests  on 
negro  efforts.  I  say  these  things  with  no 
desire  to  trouble  the  waters,  as  indeed 
I  have  no  right.  I  know  that  negro  ed 
ucation  is  in  conscientious  and  devoted 
hands.  But  these  were  things  dear  to  Phil- 
lips's  heart;  they  are  a  part  of  the  sacred 
heritage  he  entrusted  to  those  who  were 


38  WENDELL  PHILLIPS 

touched  by  his  spirit  and  should  follow 
his  leading. 

It  is  obvious  that  I  regard  negro  rights 
as  a  part  of  a  larger  matter,  gradually 
fusing  with  the  attitude  of  public  thought 
toward  all  race  questions.  The  revolution 
ary  principle  of  human  equality  flows  now 
in  a  world  channel.  I  am  more  concerned 
with  the  future  of  the  backward  nations, 
and  our  part  therein.  Something  might  be 
said  in  behalf  of  the  integrity  of  indigenous 
ideals  by  one  who,  like  myself,  knows  no 
absolute  truth, and  looks  on  all  institutions 
as  human, — the  house  of  life  which  gen 
erations  and  races  build  for  themselves 
out  of  their  own  hearts  and  thoughts  for 
a  temporary  abiding  place.  But  the  notion 
of  the  universal  integrity  of  the  soul  of 
humanity,  one  and  the  same  in  all  races, 
involves  that  of  their  union  in  one  civiliza 
tion,  since  truth  is  universal.  The  truth  of 
man  is  as  universal  as  the  truth  of  mat 
ter,  and,  under  present  conditions  of  com- 


WENDELL  PHILLIPS  39 

munication,  must  in  the  end  draw  the  na 
tions  together. 

The  recent  advance  of  the  backward 
nations  is  hardly  realized  by  us.  They 
have  made  more  speed  in  progress  rela 
tively  than  ourselves.  We  have  progressed 
in  knowledge  of  the  nature  of  matter, 
in  the  mechanic  arts,  and  in  economic 
organization,  —  things  easily  communi 
cated  and  to  be  quickly  appropriated.  In 
certain  matters,  it  is  to  be  remembered, 
some  of  the  backward  nations  have  a 
greater  past  than  ourselves,  in  art  and  in 
thought,  for  example.  I  myself  regard 
America  as  a  backward  nation  in  her 
own  group.  We  have  had  but  one  original 
thinker  in  the  last  generation,  William 
James,  and  I  had  to  go  to  Europe  to  find 
it  out ;  they  do  not  seem  to  know  it  yet 
in  Boston.  A  brief  contact  with  Continental 
thought  and  affairs  is  sufficient  to  reveal, 
not  only  the  finer  quality,  variety,  and 
potency  of  civilizing  power  there,  but  the 


40  WENDELL  PHILLIPS 

great  gap  by  which  we  fail  of  their  real 
ized  advance  in  ideas,  measures,  and  an 
ticipations.  There  one  feels  the  pulses  of 
the  world.  I  cannot  overstate  my  sense  of 
the  degree  in  which  we  lag  behind  in  all 
that  concerns  the  world  except  trade.  I 
feel  the  more  regret,  therefore,  when  I 
observe  the  weakening  of  our  hold  on 
the  one  great  principle  that  has  distin 
guished  us  as  a  nation, — qurjensej^flpo- 
litical  justice,  in  which  we  have  stood  at 
least  equally  with  France  and  England  in 
the  van.  America's  title  to  glory  among 
the  nations  is  her  service  to  human  lib 
erty.  I  can  bear  that  we  should  fail,  rela 
tively,  in  art  and  letters,  have  little  sense 
of  beauty,  or  skill  in  man's  highest  wis 
dom,  philosophic  thought,  or  in  his  high 
est  faculty,  imagination ;  but  I  cannot  bear 
that  we  should  fail  in  justice.  I  cannot  bear 
that  we  should  tear  the  Declaration  across, 
revoke  our  welcome  to  the  poor  of  all  the 
earth,  tyrannize  over  weaker  states,  con- 


WENDELL  PHILLIPS  41 

du6l  our  diplomacy  on  a  basis  of  trade  in 
stead  of  right,  or  abate  by  a  hair's  breadth 
our  standard  of  human  respeft  for  all 
mankind.  I  lament  the  acquiescence  of  the 
times  in  a  general  recreancy  to  our  fa 
thers'  principles. "  The  feet  of  the  aveng 
ing  hours  are  shod  with  wool /'said  the 
old  Greeks.  In  the  endGod  takes  his  price. 
But  I  pray  that  America  may  yet  long 
maintain  at  home  and  abroad  that  Decla 
ration  which  at  our  birth  lit  the  hopes  of 
all  the  world. 

I  have  wearied  you  with  long  talking; 
but  my  heart  is  in  my  words.  It  has  be 
come  plain  as  I  have  been  speaking  that 
I  have  set  forth  some  elements  of  the 
American  ideal,  and  that  at  the  heart  of 
that  ideal  is  a  faith.  Phillips  embodied  it. 
We  all  need  a  faith,  however  we  may 
strive  to  be  rationalistic,  agnostic,  and  to 
move  only  on  the  sure  ground  of  ascer 
tained  truth.  Without  faith  we  are  with 
out  horizons,  a  line  of  march,  something 


42  WENDELL  PHILLIPS 

ahead.  All  great  rallying  cries  are  in  the 
future.  Faith  is  beyond  us, — our  better 
part ;  it  is  the  complement  of  the  Ameri 
can  ideal,  its  atmosphere  and  heavenly 
sustenance.  The  faith  of  one  age  is  the 
fa6l  of  the  next ;  and  then  how  differently 
it  looks !  The  facl  seems  as  if  it  had  always 
been.  When  the  viftor  is  crowned,  his 
path  to  the  goal  looks  as  plain  and  straight 
as  the  king's  highway.  Who  could  miss 
that  road  ?  How  simple  was  Phillips's  ca-  \ 
reer !  It  was  a  case  of  the  hour  for  the  man 
as  well  as  the  man  for  the  hour,  from  his 
first  sally  when  the  unknown  youth  of  \ 
twenty-four  climbed  the  platform  of  Fan-  \ 
ueil  Hall,  and  at  the  first  blow  threw  his 
already  triumphing  opponent  dead  and 
forever  dishonored  on  the  field.  How 
practical  he  was !  Defeat  and  victory  alike 
were  weapons  in  his  hands.  He  had  been 
/preaching  disunion  for  a  quarter  of  a  cen- 
/  tury  when  he  stepped  forth  as  the  chief 
^orator  of  the  Union  cause.  He  was  capable 


WENDELL  PHILLIPS  43 

of  that  great  reversal.  He  welcomed  all 
instruments, — yes,  welcomed  "dynamite 
and  the  dagger"  in  their  place,  while 
Harvard  sat  spell-bound  at  the  rapt  and 
daring  defense  of  the  world-proscribed 
j  cause  by  the  lonely  truth-teller.  Do  you 
wonder  that  the  people  loved  their  great - 
tribune  at  the  last?  Boston  to-day  has  seen 
from  dawn  to  midnight  such  a  commem 
oration  as  the  city  has  not  witnessed  in 
my  time, — the  people's  tribute.  Other  re 
cent  centennials  have  been  rather  con 
ventional  affairs;  but  to-day  the  Boston 
pavements  that  he  loved,  as  he  said,  from 
when  his  mother's  hands  held  up  his 
toddling  steps,  have  waked  their  music, 
and  every  footfall  has  been  a  note  in  the 
thanksgiving  psalm  of  the  city  for  a  son 
worthy  of  his  birthplace. 

How  simple  it  seems  now!  But  we, — . 
our  causes  are  doubtful. "  We  are  but  one 
or  two/'  we  say.  Did  crowds  go  with  him  ? 
"We  shall  be  discredited. "Did  he  move 


44  WENDELL  PHILLIPS 

amid  applause?  "And  then,  the  risks/' 
we  add.  Did  he  run  none?  You  need  not 
fear  that  your  shoulder  to  the  wheel  will 
greatly  accelerate  anything  in  this  old 
world;  a  thousand  elements  of  power  must 
conjoin  in  any  great  forward  and  revo 
lutionary  change.  The  fate  of  the  world 
speeds  only  when  the  horses  of  the  god 
draw  the  car.  It  is  impossible  to  lead  life 
without  taking  risks.  I  know  that  much 
that  I  have  said  to-night  is  heavy  with 
risk.  The  willingness  to  take  risks  is  one 
gauge  of  faith.  Risk  is  a  part  of  God's 
game,  alike  for  men  and  nations.  You 
must  look  down  the  mouth  of  a  revolver 
to  learn  how  often  it  misses  the  mark. 
Poltroonery  steadies  the  aim  of  the  foe. 
Death  is  not  the  worst  of  life.  Defeat  is 
not  the  worst  of  failures.  Not  to  have  tried 
is  the  true  failure.  Above  all,  do  not  draw 
back  because  everything  is  not  plain,  and 
you  may,  perhaps, be  mistaken.  Obscurity 
is  always  the  air  of  the  present  hour.  "At 


WENDELL  PHILLIPS  45 

the  evening  time/' please  God,  "  there 
shall  be  light." 

No  great  career  opens  before  us.  For 
us  if  in  our  daily  lives  we  make  one  per 
son  a  little  happier  every  day, — and  that 
is  not  hard  to  do  if  one  attends  to  it, — it 
is  enough ;  but  should  the  hour  come  to 
any  one  of  us,  and  that  rallying  cry  be 
heard  from  out  the  dim  future,  his  place 
is  in  the  ranks,  though  mere  food  for 
powder.  I  am  speaking  of  the  battlefields 
and  heroes  of  peace,  and  of  what  may 
easily  happen.  For  that  soul  which  is  one 
and  the  same  in  the  rich  and  the  poor,  the 
wise  and  the  ignorant,  the  good  and  the 
bad, — a  moral  powrer, — may  answer  to 
the  divine  prompting  in  one  as  in  another. 
Men  differ  in  place,  honor,  and  influence, 
but  there  is  one  seamless  garment  of  life 
for  all. 

There  is  one  lesson  that  blazes  from 

Phillips's  memory, — the  principle  of  sac- 

)  rifice  as  an  integral  element  in  normal  life. 


46  WENDELL  PHILLIPS 

He  gave  all, — fortune, fame, friends.  I  am 
not  thinking  of  that  initial  step.  I  am  think 
ing  of  his  home.  That  plain  New  England 
house,  that  almost  ascetic  home,  scantily 
furnished  for  simple  needs, — a  rich  man's 
home,  as  wealth  was  then  accounted  in  that 
community, — foregoing  enjoyments,  re 
finements,  luxuries,  natural  to  the  mas 
ter's  birth  and  tastes,  in  order  that  the  un 
fortunate  might  be  less  miserable,  is  the 
monument  by  which  in  my  mind  I  remem 
ber  him:  a  life  of  daily  sacrifice.  This  is,  as 
it  were, our  baptismal  night.  I  wish  I  might 
dip  you  in  these  spiritual  waters.  It  is  noth 
ing  that  we  are  humble.  The  humblest  life 
may  be  a  life  of  sacrifice ;  and  the  poorer 
it  is,  generally,  the  greater  is  the  sacri 
fice.  Light  is  the  same  in  the  sun  and  in 
the  candle: 

"  How  far  that  little  candle  throws  his  beams! 
So  shines  a  good  deed  in  a  naughty  world." 


14  DAY  USE 

RETURN  TO  DESK  FROM  WHICH  BORROWED 

LOAN  DEPT. 

This  book  is  due  on  the  last  date  stamped  below,  or 

on  the  date  to  which  renewed. 
Renewed  books  are  subject  to  immediate  recall. 


MAY  9     1966  8  2 


1985 


JUN  2  3  1989 


AUTG.  DISC. 
AUG  u  1 1989 


LD  21A-60//i-10.'65 
(F7763slO)476B 


LD  21A-50m-3,'62 
(C7097slO)476B 


General  Library 

University  of  California 

Berkeley 


General  Library 

University  of  Californij 

Berkeley 


GENERAL  LIBRARY  -  U.C.  BERI 


11 


600072^780 


